In the beginnings
by jade-fae
Summary: And now for a taste of things to come. -Shang Tsung
1. Chapter 1

Every story has to begin somewhere. For me they'll begin here.

This is to be a collection of first chapters or prologues for any fic's I may do in the future. They will all be in their rough forms, completely unedited except for the standard spelling and grammar check.

Not all of them will be made into full stories, at least not right away, but it may give you all some insights into the odd places my brain goes.

Feel free to leave ideas in the comments though don't bother correcting my spelling and or grammar as I said earlier, these are all just roughs.


	2. Sent to Hell

Sent to Hell

In the dark of the night, in a graveyard, a travesty of nature was being committed. The kind of travesty that involves blood, bone, flesh, wicked men, and an innocent boy.

No no no, not that kind of travesty you dirty minded perverts.

(Honestly).

Harry Potter stared in shock and horror at the creature that emerged from the cauldron. It was shaped like a man but it seemed wrong of so many levels to call the thing such. It had all the necessary limbs and stood erect like a man but its face was a horrid parody of human, without any kind of nose and eyes that glowed red. It was him, the boogeyman of the wizarding world. The name that dare not be spoken even in whispers.

"Voldemort" he choked out even as he writhed against the firm grip of the statue that held him in place.

The sound of his name drew the attention of the resurrected dark lord who looked at his captive and smiled.

"Harry Potter."

Stepping out of the cauldron his robe billowing about him like black smoke he approached his captive. Green eyes met glowing red and Harry was sure in that moment that he was about to die. He could have no idea how wrong he was.

"Harry Potter" the dark lord said again, "So nice of you to be here for my triumphant return. It really wouldn't have been the same without you."

A whimpering from behind distracted him for a moment as the human rat Pettigrew clutched the stump that had once been his hand.

"Ah, but it wouldn't be a party with just the three of us and I was hoping to see some of my 'old friends'" He said, stalking toward Pettigrew with purpose.

Grabbing him by his good arm the dark lord jabbed his wand into the magical tattoo that marked all his most faithful followers, sending the message out all over England to those able to hear it. The dark lord had returned.

And they came, one by one, cloaked in black with their white skull masks hiding their faces. They came, answering the call of their wicked master, now returned to them.

"My friends" he said when the last of them had arrived, "how good it is to see you all again."

Those assembled seemed nervous at this magnanimous dark lord. They had good cause to be as he went about naming and unmasking each one of them with obvious anger. Most were wise enough not to bother with excuses. Lucious Malfoy however was not among them and insisted he had been searching, following every lead, listening for as much as a whisper.

The dark lord was not fooled and rebuked the man, then turned and rebuked the rest for none of them had come for him.

"I returned to you master" simpered Pettigrew.

"Out of fear, not loyalty" snarled the dark lord before his tone softened, "still, your assistance in these past days has been invaluable".

With a single wave of his wand he conjured a new hand of silver to replace the one his servant had sacrificed. The verminous man looked as though he would fall to his knees and kiss the dark lords feet. The others looked on, poorly hiding their jealousy.

"He really has been invaluable you know" turning once again to Harry Potter.

"He's a worthless little rat" said Harry, resisting the urge to spit.

"A rat yes, but hardly worthless" amended the dark lord, "rats are such common creatures, people hardly give them a second glance. They can easily get into places where a man might have, difficulty, getting to unnoticed. Like the deep hidden places in the ministry of magic".

Everyone but Voldemort and Pettigrew looked confused now which seemed to be the point. He was keeping them off balance, but for what purpose.

"Rise now my friends" he said, the magnanimous dark lord returning, "all is forgiven and we have much to do this evening."

And so they did as ordered, some a bit shakily but they were all shortly on their feet again, except Harry who still hanging from the statue trying not to choke.

"Peter dear boy, run back to the house and fetch the totem and the candles" said the Dark Lord.

Said Peter took off immediately in a rather awkward run toward the large house upon the hill.

"The rest of you, prepare the circle, our special guest Mr. Potter here has waited long enough."

The men in cloaks took out their wands and formed a circle. Simultaneously each cast a spell of fire and began walking clockwise around, burning a large circle into the ground.

"If you're going to kill me just get on with it already" shouted Harry Potter with a bravado he truly did not feel, simply refusing to cower in his final moments.

"Oh Harry, is that what you think is going on here" the dark lord grinned, a frightful expression on his unnatural face. "No dear boy, I'm not going to kill you. Your blood now flows through me. The protection that destroyed Quirrel is worthless now."

He proved this by rushing up to the struggling teen and placing a single finger upon his forehead, right at the base of his scar. Pain coursed through him and the dark lord laughed.

"Yes Harry Potter, I can touch you now" he said, stepping away from the struggling teen. "Your mother was a brilliant woman you know. Brilliant and practical, a rare combination, she knew she was going to die, prepared for it. That, Harry Potter, is what happened that night. Your mother, not you, was the cause of my downfall".

Harry wasn't sure what to think. He'd never cared for his fame or how he came by it and now he was being told he truly had no right to it. Honestly, it wasn't the blow it would have been to most people in his situation.

"As you saw I could kill you very easily now" said the dark lord, lazily waving his wand in the direction of his not nemesis, "and yet, still, I must wonder at what other surprises she may have left that are still waiting for a foolish man to set off. The power to vanquish and a power I know not".

"What are you talking about" demanded a confused and angry Potter.

"Prophecy, Harry. That night you and I were bound together on a journey, a journey that only one of us can survive. Had I been a wiser, more cautious man, I would not have acted upon a prophecy I did not know the full extent of. By my own actions I set it in motion" he admitted with a shrug.

Harry was aghast. A prophecy about them, no, it couldn't be, the one he'd gotten from Trelawney about Pettigrew escaping had been bad enough.

"You look surprised, I'm not. It comes as no shock that Dumbledore never bother to tell you of this though he surely knows I am not truly gone."

"What does Dumbledore have to do with it?"

"Why he was the one who heard the prophecy. He was the one who sent your parents into hiding in the hopes of protecting you until you were old enough to defeat me. Of course we both know how well that turned out" said the dark lord with a wicked grin.

Harry said nothing but renewed his struggles with vigor as Peter returned with an armload of what looked to be just random junk.

"Well done Peter, now put them in place so that we might begin" he ordered genially then turned back to Harry, "useful isn't he? Thanks to him I now know the full contents of the prophecy. This is the second reason I am not going to kill you Harry. There is good reason to believe that we are the only ones who can kill each other so long as the prophecy is active. Quite a game we could make of it I'm sure but sadly I have other concerns that take precedence and so, Harry Potter, you simply must go."

"We are ready master" called Pettigrew.

"Excellent" he said turning with a dramatic swirl of his robes, "Begin the chant, Lucious you were there the last time we did this, and Nott and Goyle, begin the chant, the rest will follow as the power takes hold."

With barely a nod the three men began to chant in a language that Harry couldn't have hoped to identify. Shortly after the others picked up as well till the only ones not calling out into the night were Voldemort and Harry.

"What are they doing" said Harry, his voice a mix of fear and wonder at the magic being performed.

"Did you know that there are many other worlds than our own, worlds full of bizzare, exotic, and horrific creatures? No of course you don't. The Hogwarts education is so very limited." He said, which certainly didn't answer the question asked.

Energy began to swirl in the circle and Voldemort smiled while Harry gasped at the sudden waves of heat.

"What…" was all he managed to say as his throat seized up and he began to cough.

"I believe it is one of the worlds that inspired the Judeo/Christian realm of eternal punishment."

Harry's face held a look of absolute horror as the dark lords words penetrated, "That's right Harry Potter, I'm sending you to Hell. And once you are gone I shall finish what I began all those years ago, I shall cleanse the world and exterminate the vermin that have infested it, and with you gone there will be no one left who can stop me. First Britain, and then, the world!"

At this proclamation he began to laugh, a wicked evil sound that was soon drowned out as the portal at last fully opened. With barely of motion of his wand Harry Potter, statue and all, was hurled into the vicious vortex by the most feared dark lord in history. Harry's own cry lost to the keening wail emanating from the door between worlds.

As the portal whirled to a close the dark lord stood apart from his minions with a look of absolute triumph. At last after more than a decade of waiting it was done. His one true failure had been corrected and now there was only success to look forward to.

'All hail Lord Voldemort'


	3. Dragons

Dragons

Alone, that's what he was. In retrospect he shouldn't have been all that surprised. Ron had always been rather fair weather when it came right down to it, a spoiled selfish entitled cretin who did more to distract him than anything else. Sure there were times when he needed a good distraction but strangely it had been those times that Ron wasn't around, odd that. No, Ron abandoning him as they hunted for the horcrux' was not that big a surprise when he thought about it. Hermione on the other hand had been a blow.

Of all the people in his life she had been the one constant, always there, always on his side. Sure there had been that nonsense about the potions book the previous year but he was more than willing to overlook that in favor of all the years prior where she had been there, helping him, directing him, keeping him alive despite his own hair brained stupidity and penchant for running into a situation head first without looking.

Yes, when Hermione had sided with Ron you could have knocked him over with a feather. While he was not by nature an arrogant sort despite what others had said, he still found it rather crippling to his nearly nonexistent ego to be passed over for Ron Weasley. Now, when he needed her most she was choosing the human eating machine over him.

Sure Hermione's unexplainable attraction to the red headed git recently should have tipped him off, had he been a more observant sort, but as it was, all he could do was sit there and listen, his mind growing darker and angrier with each 'logical' argument the filthy traitor presented. Eventually he could take no more and practically threw them out. Hermione protested of course, as always trying to make him see things her way but he refused, adamantly, almost violently which is when she gave up.

Now he was alone, truly alone. If there was one thing Harry Potter had experience with it was being alone and he would admit, though only to himself, he had never before felt it so keenly. It only took several hours of solitude before he finally decided on a course of action. He took the thrice damned horcrux, stepped outside the tent, and proceeded to burn it to ash.

He'd had quite enough. Without Ron and especially Hermione he had no direction and only one plan. Following his godfathers example he was going to get blind stinking drunk and do his level best to just forget. It wasn't a particularly good plan, far from it, but it was all he had and damned if it wasn't better than just sitting in a tent alone and feeling sorry for himself.

…

Alcohol, Harry discovered, did not in fact make him forget. Sure it gave him a nice buzz for a while but he never seemed to get past that no matter how much he drank. Fortunately, his plan was adaptable, the primary objective being to forget and to do so my any means possible. It was thus at the third or possibly fourth pub, on the third or fourth day he'd been hopping from pub to pub across Britain, that he discovered the answer. Her name was Maryjane.

He'd heard of the substance before, thanks to Dudley, but like so many things in the world he had been deprived of the chance to try it. Not anymore.

His first drag had not gone terrible well, what with him having no experience with that sort of thing he nearly hacked up a lung which made all the blurry shadows at the table laugh most jovially. His second go, after a few directions, was positively euphoric.

Ever since then he'd been popping around living on beer and weed and the occasional basket of greasy pub grub. Come day seven he had no idea where he was and really didn't care. He'd been popping around blindly for days it was a wonder he hadn't splinched himself.

It was then, on the seventh night, after leaving the most recent hole he'd managed to stumble into that he found himself meandering drunkenly up a hill, a bottle of whiskey in one hand, a half smoked joint in the other, and some bawdy Irish drinking song spewing forth from his gullet.

"Then we'll throw up pass out wake up and then go drinkin once again" he declared to a shining full moon, raising his whiskey in a salute to the only fella around before knocking back half the remaining contents.

With a mighty belch and an appreciative chuckle he continued on, only to come to an abrupt and unplanned stop.

"Alright, what asshole put a wall in front of me" he shouted.

Not surprisingly no one answered and Harry tried to focus past his blurry vision to see where he was. Having no luck he took off his glasses and tried again. It didn't help yet strangely it didn't get any worse either. Childishly blowing his spectacles a raspberry he tossed them away and with a touch of caution found the edge of the stupid wall and proceeded on past it.

Satisfied he was not going to be interrupted by any more walls he knocked back his whiskey as he walked. This proved to be a mistake as one swig and two steps later he went toppling forward after tripping over something quite sizable. Given his poorly balanced state he went tumbling head over heels making two rolls before landing squarely on his arse. Left to wonder what the hell just happened he lifted his bottle to take another swig and was extremely upset to find it empty. The cause of this being the bottom had gone missing and taken the remaining contents with it.

This set off a string of profanity and curses that would have had most sailors shedding tears of pride at the sound of such course and foul language. Angrily he took a drag on his joint which miraculously hadn't disappeared during his tumble. He hadn't meant to suck so hard and he certainly hadn't meant to suck down the joint itself, but he did.

He hacked and coughed at the obstruction in his throat as he stumbled around, flailing about with his broken bottle and managing to cut himself several times before finally ejecting the obstruction. He stood hunched over for a time hacking and coughing and simply letting his anger boil.

One step was all it took and he went flailing to the ground, showering the nearby grass with blood. He rolled over onto his back and stared up at the sky his breath coming in great angry heaves. He was beyond angry now and smoke and drink and more than a decade of suppressed fury came bubbling to the surface. He tried to yell, tried to scream, but all that came out were harsh guttural sounds, no words that he knew just angry furious bestial sounds.

…

Whether by chance or the workings of some higher power it was not a wall that Harry Potter had walked into but one of the still standing stones of the legendary Stonehenge, a ritualistic site older than Merlin whose ultimate purpose has remained unknown to magicals since the time of their fabled wizard. Harry Potter certainly had no idea what it was nor even where he was, at least not consciously, but there are other beings, in this world and other worlds that know what the great circles were built for. Their purpose is known even to the newest born of their kind, the knowledge, some might say, is in their blood.

Blood is a very important part of many powerful magic's, the kind of magic's that pitiful bureaucrats have tried to ban and outlaw. Of course, that doesn't stop people, it certainly didn't stop Lily Potter, and if Harry knew what was about to happen to him it undoubtedly wouldn't have stopped him either.

…

As Harry Potter lay bleeding and chanting in a language long forgotten by the tongues of men another world came into alignment with our own. This world was an older world and a world where magic was an integral part of everything, a world where greater magical beings and creatures were common and did not hide away in shame like wizards.

When this world came into alignment two things happened, first it created a channel between the two worlds, a conduit that allowed a certain amount of passage between the two, not of physical things like people but of metaphysical, things that are not so easily explained. The second thing it did was create a channel of magic between the two worlds, connected at very specific places, such as the one where a drunken Harry Potter was chanting in a language he didn't know for a purpose he could never have even guessed at.

When the connection was made, the power began to flow instantly and this had a very obvious effect on the one person who happened to be in the path of that flow. Magic the likes of which he had never imagined passed through him and everything he was carrying that even had a spec of magic on it like a foul artifact with a piece of soul inside, a family cloak, a tattered old piece of parchment with a secret, a golden ball with something hidden inside, or even the venom, tears, and fragment of a Horntails spike that still resided within his body.

His frail human body was unable to handle such immense levels of power but magic is not in and of itself a force of destruction but a force of change. Instead of destroying what could never hope to channel such massive amounts of magic it changed it into something that could, merging all the marked components with a rough blueprint of the creature closest to the individual that could do the job.

The transformation as it was brought pain beyond what any mortal is able to comprehend as it forcibly altered him not only on the physical level but others as well that he had never even known existed. Knowledge was crammed into his new brain, knowledge of his new form, knowledge of the world that had inspired it, even knowledge of magic itself. This powerful download was almost as bad as the pain of the transformation and it was not till sometime after it had all finished and the worlds moved out of alignment again that he returned to consciousness.

Strangely despite having just returned to consciousness he found his mind oddly clear and focused. He stretched his neck up and stared at the moon, still exactly as he remembered it yet at the same time different, clearer. It was about then that some of the new information began to trickle in, such as why his neck was now so flexible, and long.

Turning to look behind himself he found this new neck much nicer than his old one as he was now able to look at his own butt, and what a butt it was with a long powerful tail and strong legs shaped rather like a horse but ending in a large three clawed foot. His entire body as he observed was covered in scaly blue skin with a row of curving ridges running down his spine.

Turning his head forward and peering down his long snout he saw that his underbelly was pail and smooth to contrast with his blue scales and that his front limbs had been morphed into the oddest appendages he'd ever seen. It took a few moments to realize what the elongated fingers and flaps of skin could possibly be for, but when he did he couldn't help but smile, an expression that showed of a long mouthful of sharp pointy teeth.

Harry reared up on his hind legs and threw his wings wide open before calling out into the night with a mighty roar. He knew not by what means he had come by this new form as information was still trickling in but one thing was for certain, Voldemort was in for a nasty surprise the next time he saw him. After all, dark wizards are all well and good but no one messes with dragons for they find people crunchy and good with ketchup.


End file.
